The good folks at A Voice for Men, the most influential Men’s Rights site out there, like to talk a lot about how much they hate hatred. Specifically, the alleged hatred allegedly promoted by feminists. Here’s Dean Esmay, the site’s Managing Editor and Chief Operations Officer, offering some typically nuanced thoughts on the subject earlier today on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/deanesmay/status/597082318168272896
So how have the powers that be at AVFM responded to the revelation that one of their contributors, Indian MRA Amartya Talukdar, is a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan who thinks Hillary Clinton is a “Jewess?” Did they denounce Talukdar for his embrace of perhaps the most hateful hater in history, and take down his posts on their site? Not so much.
I sent a few Tweets to AVFM head man Paul Elam cataloguing some of Talukdar’s more colorful statements on Twitter; Elam responded by blocking me.
So I sent an email to Esmay.
Dean —
It seems a bit odd for someone who goes on about the alleged “hatred” allegedly promoted by feminists and the SPLC to remain silent about the fact that AVFM just published a post written by a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan,
And, no, that’s not hyperbole. Here’s the proof — these are all archived tweets of his.
Here are the Tweets I linked to. (Click on the images to see the archived versions.)
(In case you’re wondering about the abrupt ending there, Talukdar was trying to write “hail [sic] Hitler” and ran out of characters. He finished up in a followup Tweet.)
I then linked Esmay to my post on the subject, telling him he could find more examples there.
I continued:
Maybe you didn’t know. But you know now — and so does Paul; I contacted him about it on Twitter, and he responded by blocking me, so it’s clear he saw my Tweets. …
So will you or Paul be doing anything about this?
A fairly simple question, no?
Here was Esmay’s thoughtful response:
So I’m going to take that as a “no, AVFM will not be doing anything about the fact that they have published the writings of a Holocaust denier and Hitler fan who thinks Hillary Clinton is a ‘Jewess.'”
When I first wrote about Talukdar’s, er, interesting beliefs, I said I thought AVFM would respond to the news by deflecting and denying the truth. I didn’t expect Elam would also block me on Twitter for asking, or that Esmay would declare me a “stalker madman” after dismissing direct evidence of Talukdar’s beliefs as somehow being “lies” on my part.
The AVFMers aren’t the only ones trying to employ evasive maneuvers. Talukdar has deleted his original Holocaust-denying, Hitler-praising Tweets. And when I sent him Tweets asking him about his beliefs he first responded by
- listing a number of famous anti-Semites (including Henry Ford and Richard Wagner and George Washington, who actually wasn’t an anti-Semite) and asking if I expected him to hate them too
- asking me “why is there rampant divorce illegitimacy and teenage pregnancy in USA”
- telling me that “you are a fundamentalist who uses terror to scuttle people’s voice”
- telling me that “you are a hate monger who doesn’t believe in freedom of speech.”
Several hours later, after I wrote to Esmay, Talukdar tried a new tack, admitting that Hitler was indeed a “devil” and a “hate monger”and promising that he would stop denying the Holocaust … if I acknowledged the Bengal Famine.
Obviously, this makes no sense; his beliefs on the Holocaust should not be contingent on what some random person believes about a different historical event. I wrote back:
@a_talukdar You'll agree that there was a Holocaust … if I agree that there was a Bengal famine? That makes no sense whatsoever.
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) May 9, 2015
@a_talukdar I don't deny the Bengal famine, or Churchill's large role in it, but why would that change what you think about the Holocaust?
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) May 9, 2015
I asked him why, if he honestly believed that Hitler was a hate monger, he had Tweeted “hail [sic] Hitler” less than a week ago. He replied:
I told him that this also made no sense, and that it sounded like he was just telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. I asked him to explain why, as recently as this past week, he had declared the Holocaust a “lie” and “propaganda devoid of any facts,” and was demanding proof that Hitler’s gas chambers had even existed.
After a series of evasive non-answers Talukdar grudgingly admitted:
Shortly afterwards he took his account private. (Luckily I thought to screenshot his recent Tweets before he did this; see here. The only one missing is the one listing anti-Semites.)
These aren’t, I daresay, the actions of someone who has actually changed his mind. So you’ll have forgive me if I doubt the sincerity of his apparent, if grudging, rejection of the Holocaust denial he was so recently, and repeatedly, espousing.
Here’s the text of a letter written by George Washington to aJewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Letter_to_Touro_Synagogue
Its convincing proof that George Washington was not in fact an anti-Semite, and a pretty good smack down of anti-Semitism in general.
@M.
“Has David ever tried making a post about the blueness of the sky or the wetness of water just to see the MRA response? Either way, I’d love to see it.”
They would probably try to spin it into misandry somehow. I don’t know how, but that’s probably what would happen given what we’ve seen from them.
I can’t help but compare the MRM’s response to David to Gamergate’s response to… every reputable media outlet that covers them. “They say bad things about us, therefore they are liars!” Except the MRAs don’t even try to list lies, like gamergaters do–they just claim David is a liar without any examples.
Probably because admitting “He quotes us verbatim and exposes us to outsiders” is not much of an argument.
God, David, how dare you read public tweets on a public twitter account, recognize that they’re tweets denying the Holocaust, and then send them to the employer of the tweeter. This is clearly stalking because only a stalker would be able to see what someone was posting on Twitter. It’s literally impossible to access public tweets in any other manner.
/sarcasm
Also, I just realized that Talukdar thinks that he’s contributing as much to society as Henry Ford, George Washington (not an anti-Semite, but Talukdar is still making the claim and comparison), and Richard Wagner did and that he and all of them should be allowed to get away with anti-Semitism because of those contributions.
Let’s see. Henry Ford revolutionized automobile production, made cars more readily available to the American public, and realized that paying his employees halfway decent wages would encourage them to work harder. Richard Wagner was a brilliant composer and musician. George Washington played a major role in founding the United States of America. Amartya Talukdar is writing posts on a hate site arguing against the criminalization of martial rape and domestic abuse. One of these things is not like the others.
“you’re a professional liar who gets his money on the backs of the bruised and helpless, like a soci[o]pathic sadist”
MRA and their projections.
Dean Esmay would have sent the same response no matter what your email said. He’s scared to death of engaging with you. That’s why his response borders on hysteria.
The aversion to reality contained in his response is alarming.
The quality of the writers and commenters on AVFM is incredibly low, but Mr. Talukdar is rock bottom.
@davidknewton:
“What I don’t understand is why they (virtually everyone at AVFM) calls you a liar, when you hand them quotations directly from themselves?”
That’s their SOP. Quoting them verbatim is a lying, vicious, gynocentric conspiracy, as is reality in general.
Call the police? Pff, Esmay, grow a thicker skin! Or maybe quit the internet if you can’t handle criticism!
Something I just don’t get is why bigots feel the need to unnecessarily gender words. ‘Jew’ refers to all people who are Jewish, it doesn’t need to be turned into ‘Jewess’ for women. I’ve seen other bigots do it too, like H.P. Lovecraft referring to a black woman as a ‘negress’.
Do MRAs celebrate Mother’s day?
Chaltab, I believe that’s a deliberate archaism. Time was in English speaking countries that many nouns now gender neutral were gendered. Poetess, authoress, and my favorite, aviatrix. Most common one being actress, but even that is less common than it was. So, I think, he’s evoking an era when his odious views would have been mainstream. That he would have been living under either the East India Company or the Raj back then probably hasn’t occurred to him.
I think “liar” is another one of those words they think is a magical deflector rather than a word with real meaning.
@David
While dreaming I managed to find an intact copy of the MRA Dictionary. It was enlightening.
Lies:
Anything that does not conform to my world view, regardless of source or validity
Evidence:
Everything that confirms my worldview, regardless of source or validity.
Science:
The excuse to claim that Evidence are true and that Lies are false
Something something glass houses.
By the by, how much did Elam make to *ahem* “upkeep” his site? I know it was well below his asking price.
http://cdn.meme.am/instances/56091742.jpg
@Robert
I think it’d be longer ago than that! I don’t ever remember reading the word ‘Jewess’ in the King James Bible (AD 1611). XD
So essentially they just put their fingers in their ears and started shouting ‘LA LA NOT LISTENING!!!’ in response to David’s questions. So much for redpillian facts and logic.
I for one, am shocked.
Yeah, you know, “I’ll call the police if you continue to send me civil emails containing evidence that the people in my employ are objectively sympathetic to Nazis” makes me doubt how much water the whole “zomg feminists have such a victim complex” thing can hold.
Ah seriously. Whenever I see people saying that kind of stuff I automatically think, sure the watchers of hate groups are totally a hate group. That sounds totally legit. [/sarcasm]
Esmay’s response to you made me laugh so hard, David. Oh the irony. And he plagiarizes his insults to boot. LOL!
I also learned today that the word liar doesn’t mean what it used to. Apparently, it now means someone who quotes another person accurately and provides links so you can read the article for yourself. Who knew.
@gorillaella
I don’t exactly enjoy being contrarian, but I was under the impression that the Nazis did support anti-colonial movements and ethnic-cultural nationalism like the one that ended up splitting Pakistan and India, which is why the ideology is still fairly popular in nations that formerly were european colonies. I was also under the impression that Stalin’s caucasian ethnicity had no influence on Hitler’s politics and that globally speaking, “Caucasian” is generally recongnized as a piece of US-exclusive newspeak with little bearing on or use in the local discussion of race outside of its national borders. The question as to how to forge a new majority that includes people that can pass as non-coloured really wasn’t all that urgent for political parties in other nations of the first world, as far as I can gather.
Maybe it is very obvious but I didn’t see other people say it.
I think the “stop emailing me” thing is an attempt to portray David as a harasser. If David ever emails Dean again, Dean will act as if he is being stalked and severely impacted. Some stupid portrayal of David’s emails as being anywhere close to being inundated with rape and death threats will show how ”both sides do it”.
It reminds me of the twitter account which purported to show how antiGG were really the harassing group. The feed just seemed to prove how thin-skinned GG was for the most part. Maybe they found some actual harassment, but I got bored digging through so many screenshots of tweets which said “neckbeard”.
This seems like another instance of seizing upon every “SJW trump card” word they can find (hate group! stalker!) without having the slightest idea of what those words mean. Or at least, the honesty to admit that words mean things and that those words don’t apply here.
Also, yes, what opium4themasses said.
These are the people who go “OMG feminists want to classify hand holding as rape!” then in another breath “the gynocentric courts are divorce raping men by making them have to share their kids with their ex! Oh the violation! MISANDRY.”
When I think of professional liars who make their money upon the backs of the bruised and helpless, Holocaust deniers (and Holocaust denier-deniers) spring to mind.
Boy, their PR is inept. “Dean Esmay could not be reached for comment” would have been a more dignified response, instead of handing you ammunition. Calling you a “stalker madman” and threatening to call the police is just embarrassing. What would the charge be? Third Degree Exposure Of Internet Faux Pas?